Fire fighters are on the ground trying to put it out, but from outside, huge smoke can be seen billowing from the top floors/MUTHONI NJUKI
NAIROBI, Kenya, May 4- Panic gripped workers at Sarit Centre Shopping Complex after fire broke out in one of the shops on the ground floor.
The fire, believed to have been caused by an electric fault, is still fast spreading.
Fire fighters are on the ground trying to put it out, but from outside, huge smoke can be seen billowing from the top floors.
“Come out. Come out please…” authorities would be heard pleading with security guards and fire fighters holed up on the top floor.
A security guard could be seen taking video from a top floor that was burning, despite the glaring danger.
“You won’t show your video while dead. Vacate…” a senior security officer thundered.
Members of public who had camped outside the mall located in Westlands were forced to move to safety.
People working in the mall were fast evacuated way before the fire spread.
But some only left the mall after it was completely dark, in what they have described as “a near death experience.”
Michelle Richter was with her staff inside their beauty shop when they started smelling “something like electric cables burning.”
She asked her staff to lock the door, inside because of the smoke, little didn’t she know the situation could worsen.
“It turned all dark. You could barely see the staircase. I had to use my hands to feel my way out…I saw death,” she told Capital FM News.
Others thought it was a terrorists attack similar to that of Westgate Mall, a few metres away from Sarit, that left 67 people dead.
“What came to my mind when we were asked to evacuate was Al Shabaab,” Mary Kakani said.
“That’s what we fear most those of us working in malls.”
By the time this report was filed, there were no casualties reported.
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